lent and spring awakening!

lent garden activity

Whilst eating our pancakes we made a Lent Garden for the season table! This is a sweet activity to do with children during Lent. We used a small jam jar under the moss for the cave and one of the blocks from the Gluckskafer Robinia Blocks for the front of it, gem stones and stones for the path and the Myriad Ostheimer Easter Animal Selection, and a Mini Felt Friends Butterfly to decorate the scene. We also added an Egg Beeswax Candle. We had fun digging up some grass, moss and primroses in the garden but we could have also done it as just soil and sprinkled grass seeds to watch them slowly grow throughout lent, which we have done in the below fairy garden idea.

lent fairy garden

Another version we are doing here is a little fairy garden. In a terracotta dish we have put stones, soil, gemstones, and Branch Wood Play Counters to make a fairy path. We have then sprinkled the soil with grass seeds and during lent we will spray with water and keep it on a windowsill and watch the grass hopefully grow taller and taller the closer and closer we get to Easter….some little Spring Felt Flower Fairies will then hopefully move in and hide in the grass! We will post the result on our Instagram closer to Easter!

imaginative spring cleaning

We’ve been inspired by this wonderfully uplifting book, ‘Homemaking and Personal Development’. The author, Veronika van Duin began her career as a homemaker forty years ago. Setting out with love, enthusiasm and idealism, she soon discovered that she had no idea of the magnitude of the task, feeling herself to be ‘very, very wanting’. As she writes: “…I felt guilty, pressurised and inadequate much of the time. I became increasingly conscious of my personal shortcomings. I also felt very alone, and sometimes lonely too…” It is from such humbling feelings that van Duin writes, offering support and hope for fellow homemakers. Veronica van Duin gives exercises for restoring balance, maintaining equilibrium, discovering understanding, creating joy, validating feeling, maintaining vitality and drive, developing insight, finding freedom, and much more.

We particularly love this extract from the book…

“We can express our creativity through very mundane activities. Cleaning and cooking, gardening, the paper on which we paint. Seeing housework as drudgery dries up our creative talent. We should wake up to new imaginative thinking. We are entitled to the recognition that we are artists in daily life. Homemaking is varied enough to give countless opportunities for artistic talent. We would do well to remind ourselves of this startling truth. Art is not merely to paint, sculpt, make music, compose or act in such narrow terms. Every time we cook a meal we create a work of art. Every time we clean and arrange a room, we sculpt space. Every time we move through our daily chores in harmony with the things we use, we make music. And every time we interact imaginatively with our fellow house companions, we are acting on the stage of life.”

As a special offer we are offering 50% off the RRP £9.95 of this book so only £4.95!

This has inspired us to think differently about the upcoming task of spring cleaning! I’m looking forward to the creative expression of sculpting spaces, rearranging rooms and artistically enjoying looking after the home and garden.

We have some beautiful products in the natural living range, perfectly suited to making the daily chores a harmonious and creative experience.